DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT MAKES YOU YOU?

I have been thinking. I have been drinking too. I don’t know if it is the drinking or it is that am just crazy. We can disregard the drinking part. All I can remember drinking today is water. Not unless Jesus decided to turn the water we drink here into wine like he did back in those days in Galilee, I think I am pretty darn sober.

Maybe we will go with the part that I am crazy, but hey, don’t judge me yet until you hear my part of the story.

Deal?

Of course, deal!

The kind of thinking that I have been doing recently is kind of weird.

I have been thinking to myself, What the hell makes me, me?

Hold on, lemme ask you a question, what makes you, you?

To proof what I am talking about, let us look at some theories.

No, it is not Pythagoras theorem, Pythagoras is boring, who the hell wants to calculate the height of a triangle on the internet?

OUR FIRST THEORY IS… THE BODY THEORY

The reason I am starting with this is the fact that it is what everyone equates to what makes them, them. This what people equate to what a person is.

Are you reading me or am I just talking to my crazy ass?

Yes?

Good. I love y’all geniuses!

The body theory claims that your body is what makes you, you. This makes perfect sense because when your body stops working you will fucking die.

Lemme give you an example, let’s say that you have a girlfriend and you are also very broke (hint for guys, broke does not work with keeping a girl around). You are in the city with your girlfriend doing window shopping (you cannot afford shit). Another guy pulls up beside you both with a Ferrari.

He opens the door of his Ferrari and steps out. He is a crazy ass dude, 6 feet 7 inches tall with each and every part of his body giving a very clear message to you which goes like: Nobody fucks with me and lives to tell about it.

This very same guy then picks up on your girlfriend.

You try to show that you are a man by attacking this guy but he whoops your ass.

You threaten to call the cops but he points at his face and says: “I own the cops motherfucker!”

He leaves with your girlfriend and you can’t do shit. Once you get back to your friends after a traumatic experience like this, you friends will notice that you have changed.

They will make comments like, “So and so has really changed.”

You have changed but you are still you because you have the same body that you had yesterday.

But… Let’s test this theory…

Let’s say James here has a heart problem. Samuel here has fucked up his whole body after jumping from a moving train, but Samuel’s heart is still functioning normally. Samuel cannot recover, so the doctors consult with Samuel’s wife and she agrees that her husband can give his heart to James. So, it passes James receives the much-needed heart transplant which saves him.

It also happens James disease has affected more than just his heart. His kidney, liver, blood, lungs one of his eyes has to be replaced. His face too needs to be replaced with synthetic material too. After all is fixed and everything is working just fine, James is released from hospital and he goes back home to is family.

What James has now as his body, 90% of it does not belong to him. Would his family claim that James is not James because of this?

Of course, no. It is still the good old James.

Maybe they claim this because his body still has its DNA intact. His remaining cells still have the ability to carry his DNA. But when two twins are born, they have similar DNA, but still they are not the same person.

Do you still think that this body theory still works?

Because I honestly do not think so.

Let us move on to the next test.

THE BRAIN THEORY

Let’s assume that a mad genius scientist tracks you down and abducts you from where you live. He knocks you out and he carry’s you to his Lab and when you wake up you find that you and the former President of the republic of Zimbabwe are in the same room.

Your conversation with Robert Mugabe goes like:

You: “Hey, are you the former president of Zimbabwe?’

Mugabe: “Yes, I am.”

You: “What the fuck are we doing in here?”

Mugabe: “I also have no fucking idea, some dudes kidnapped me and knocked me out and when I woke up I was here, I think they want to ask for ransom or something.”

You: “By the way I have been meaning to ask you, there are many quotes on Facebook that belong to you. Do you usually say this shit?”

Mugabe: “Why the fuck not, I do and say what I want…”

Before Mugabe can finish his sentence, the mad scientist enters.

He performs an operation on you and exchanges your brains. When you wake up you have the brain that belongs to 93-year-old Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe has your brain in his head too.

You look across and see your body with which has Robert’s personality.

You yourself is inside Robert’s body. You are still you the only difference is the fact that you are in a different body.

Your former body is now Mugabe and within no time Robert will start making those fucked up quotes while he is inside your body.

THE DATA THEORY

Let’s assume that the scientist sees that operating on your brains and exchanging them is far too risky. So, he puts both of you to sleep using his very strong sleeping pills.

He then hooks both of your brains to a supercomputer. He copies all the data in your brains into the computer and labels the folders containing your data very carefully. He then erases every single bit of data in your brains. He then copies your data from the computer to Mugabe’s brain and then copies Mugabe’s data into your brain.

Once you wake up, you will have both your physical brains but you will not be you anymore, you will be Mugabe and Mugabe will be you. Remember we did not transplant anything, we only exchanged data.

Roberts body which now has all your memories and all your thoughts would freak out and run the hell out of the mad scientist’s lab and go to your family. Yes, Robert’s body would know your family he has all your thoughts remember.

If you’re a teen who watches porn in his room, the 93-year-old Mugabe’s body will go and lock himself in your room and watch porn just as you do. He will even know your computer password, your Facebook and Instagram account password too.

He will even take selfies and start posting them on your Facebook and twitter.

He will even start looking for memes and send them on your favorite WhatsApp groups. Remember he is you now.

Now you would take off and go to Zimbabwe and claim to be the former president there. You have all Mugabe’s memories and thoughts remember.

THE TORTURE TEST

First situation: In the above theory, the mad scientist decides to torture you both.

He walks to you (Remember now you are in Mugabe’s body) and tells you, I am going to take a whip and beat the shit out of one of you, who would you like it to be?

You would obviously say that he should whip your original body. You don’t reside there anymore. You are in Mugabe’s body.

Let’s look at this from another angle shall we…

The mad scientist captures you and Robert, except he doesn’t do anything to your brains yet. He comes over to you—normal you with your normal brain and body—and asks you a series of questions. This is the conversation that happens between both of you:

Mad Genius Scientist (MGS): Okay so here’s how it’s gonna go. I have torture one of you. Who should I torture?

MGS: Okay but there’s something else—before I torture whoever I torture, I’m going to wipe both of your brains of all memories, so when the torture is happening, neither of you will remember who you were before this. Does that change your choice?

You: Nope. Torture him. I told you already. T-O-R-T-U-R-E H-I-M!

MGS: One more thing—before the torture happens, not only am I going to wipe your brains clean, I’m going to build new circuitry into your brain that will convince you that you’re Robert Mugabe. By the time I’m done, you’ll think you’re Robert Mugabe and you’ll have all of his memories and his full personality and anything else that he thinks or feels or knows. I’ll do the same thing to him, convincing him he’s you. Does that change your choice?

You: Um, no. Torture him.

In the first situation, you’d choose to have your own body tortured. In the second situation, you’d choose Robert Mugabe’s body—at least I would. But,In both cases, before any torture happens, Robert’s brain ends up with all of your data and your brain has his—the difference is just at which point in the process you were asked to decide. In both cases, your goal is for you to not be tortured, but in the first situation, you felt that after the brain data swap, you were in Robert’s body, with all of your personality and memories there with you—while in the second situation, if you’re like me, you didn’t care what was going to happen with the two brains’ data, you believed that you would remain with your physical brain, and body, either way.

Choosing your body to be the one tortured in the first situation is an argument for the Data Theory—you believe that where your data goes, you go. Choosing Robert’s body to be tortured in the second situation is an argument for the Brain Theory, because you believe that regardless of what he does with your brain’s data, you will continue to be in your own body, because that’s where your physical brain is. Some might even take it a step further, and if the mad scientist told you he was even going to switch your physical brains, you’d still choose Mugabe’s body, with your brain in it, to be tortured. Those that would torture a body with their own brain in it over torturing their own body believe in the Body Theory.

TELETRANSPORTER THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

The year is 3018. The human beings’ technology has proceeded beyond what we can imagine right now. They have even built what they are calling teleportation.

If you live in Kenya you can now work in New York city. The teleportation device can transport you to distant place in the speed of light.

How this teleportation device works is that you go into a teleportation chamber that is found somewhere in the city. You select your location from the dashboard and then press the button labelled go.

Let say that you are in Nairobi and you are attending a meeting in New York. You just select New York and press the button and then the walls of the chamber will scan your whole body and upload the exact molecular makeup of your body—every atom that makes up every part of you and its precise location—and as it scans, it destroys, so every cell in your body is destroyed by the scanner as it goes.

When it’s finished (the Departure Chamber is now empty after destroying all of your cells), it beams your body’s information to an Arrival Chamber in New York, which has all the necessary atoms waiting there ready to go. The Arrival Chamber uses the data to re-form your entire body with its storage of atoms, and when it’s finished you walk out of the chamber in New York looking and feeling exactly how you did back in Nairobi—you’re in the same mood, you’re hungry just like you were before, you even have the same itch you had in the morning where your wife slapped you.

But then one day, you head into the Departure Chamber in Nairobi for your normal morning commute to your job in New York, you press the big button on the wall, and you hear the scanner turn on, but it doesn’t not appear to work. You don’t disappear.

You head to the check-in counter and tell the woman working there that the Departure Chamber is broken, and you ask her if there’s another one you can use, since you have an early meeting and don’t want to be late.

She looks down at her records and says, “Hm—it looks like the scanner worked and collected its data just fine, but the cell destroyer that usually works in conjunction with the scanner has malfunctioned.”

“No,” you explain, “it couldn’t have worked, because I’m still here. And I’m late for this meeting—can you please set me up with a new Departure Chamber?”

She pulls up a video screen and says, “No, it did work—see? There you are in New York—it looks like you’re gonna be right on time for your meeting.” She shows you the screen, and you see yourself walking on the street in New York.

“But that can’t be me,” you say, “because I’m still here.”

At that point, her supervisor comes into the room and explains that she’s correct—the scanner worked as normal and you’re in New York as planned. The only thing that didn’t work was the cell destroyer in the Departure Chamber here in Nairobi. “It’s not a problem, though,” he tells you, “we can just set you up in another chamber and activate its cell destroyer and finish the job.”

And even though this isn’t anything that wasn’t going to happen before—in fact, you have your cells destroyed twice every day—suddenly, you’re horrified at the prospect.

“Wait—no—I don’t want to do that—I’ll die.”

The supervisor explains, “You won’t die sir. You just saw yourself in New York —you’re alive and well.”

The supervisor and the woman glance awkwardly at each other. “I’m really sorry sir—but we’re obligated by law to destroy your cells. We’re not allowed to form the body of a person in an Arrival Chamber without destroying the body’s cells in a Departure Chamber.”

You stare at them in disbelief and then run for the door. Two security guards come out and grab you. They drag you toward a chamber that will destroy your cells, as you kick and scream…

“Damn assholes!” you say.

If you followed this example you will realized that every day this guy has his body cells destroyed twice in a day. The first time is when he is going to work in New York and the second time is when he comes back.

Now when the teleportation device did not happen to work he just realized that he dies everyday and the other person already in New York is not him.

WRAPPING UP…

I am still confused up until now. I have been thinking and thinking and I finally have decided to share this with you people.

After reading all that, can you then tell for sure what makes you, you?

Myself, I cannot tell.

Please share this online until we get a perfect answer to this question.

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2 thoughts on “DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT MAKES YOU YOU?”

It’s an interesting question to think about – What is it that makes you unique? What makes our self-awareness? I think it is a combination of your body, your mind and the experiences of your past. They shape your body and soul.
You have a very interesting style of writing, I really enjoyed reading your post.

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Who is Mathenge Maina?

Coffee addict. I like to create through words. When I am not writing i am most likely seen carrying some chemical engineering books or trying to figure out what the next big idea will be. I am just trying to change the world one word at a time. Read about me here.